A 10-year-old boy was ripped from his father's hands by the force of rushing water. "Daddy! Daddy!" he screamed, as he was carried away.
       Fishermen who returned to Banda Aceh, after the tsunami hit, discovered that they had lost everyone in their families.
        A man's wife and children lay buried beneath the rubble of their home, as the man had no one to help him recover their bodies.
        "The stories just rip your heart out," said Dr. Clif Caldwell, an emergency room physician at Cannon Memorial Hospital in Pickens, South Carolina who accompanied a disaster relief team from the North Carolina Baptist Association to Banda Aceh. The once bustling capital city in the Aceh Province of Sumatra in Indonesia was hit by the December 26, 2004 tsunami, which was caused by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and claimed more than 221,000 lives and left millions homeless, according to the latest estimates from the International Mission Board. 
        "Body bags and mass graves are on the side of the road," Caldwell told this writer, in an interview with The Christian View. "There is a landfill about every one to two miles. They find a low part and push everything into it. It's hard to visualize how far reaching the destruction is." 
        The tsunami’s devastation upon the land is unimaginable, but the devastation in the hearts of the survivors is greater, for everyone has lost loved ones. "Nobody is without loss in Sumatra," said Caldwell. 
        Yet the people of Banda Aceh have been receptive and have opened their hearts to the strangers from America who have come to their land to befriend them. "It was an incredible tragedy," said Caldwell. "Everybody has a story, and, as we listened to them, and cried with them, they knew that we cared, and they were glad that we were there. 
        "We have an incredible moment in time to make a difference, to make an impact for Christ." 

       
        Dr. Clif Caldwell treats patients at a clinic set up in Banda Aceh. 
        Caldwell was part of a Christian medical team that traveled to Indonesia 
        to share the love of Christ with victims of the tsunami.

                    


   
                                            The disaster relief team


        Caldwell explained that the Aceh Province had been closed to westerners for about five years, as rebel fighters, wanting to make the Aceh Province a Muslim state, had been fighting for independence. The tsunami’s destruction opened the door to the closed society, as the people have welcomed any assistance and compassion from the outside world. The rebels and the Indonesian military are now talking peace.
        "This is an opportunity for all of us to keep open and bring to life this otherwise completely dark area of the world," he said, noting that groups from different parts of America continue to rotate in, every couple of weeks, setting up base in a rented house in Banda Aceh, building relationships with the people so that the area will not be closed to westerners again.
        "The outpouring from churches has been phenomenal," he said. 
        Caldwell felt led to go, after being asked by a longtime friend, Eric Troyer, one of the doctors on the team, and after discussing it with his wife. "Julie and I both felt it was a good thing we were doing," he said, "because it wasn’t just me, it was my whole family making it possible. 
        "There will be more groups," he added, "not just medical but also groups to clean out the wells that were contaminated with salt water, and construction crews to build a water treatment plant. They’re brainstorming with ideas, in order to keep open this Province, which has been called a doorstep to Mecca and which is one of Al Qaeda’s major recruitment areas and fanatically Muslim. Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world, and an incredibly diverse culture. There are so many unreached people who need ministering to."

              
                Many children who survived the tsunami were left orphans.

        Caldwell explained that long-term clinics had been set up at the refugee camps for the people whose villages had been destroyed. 
        His group, accompanied by translators at the camps, included several doctors and nurses and other medical personnel, as well as a preacher (team leader Larry Doyle, Troyer, Dr. David Hopper, Rebekah Austin, Angie Partin, Mary Lynn Henderson, Kevin Vanhorn, Charles Martin, Gary Grey, and Rev. Terry Larsen). 
        "We met public health doctors from an Albanian relief agency who had been in a camp for two weeks and were leaving," said Caldwell. "One of the doctors was emotional and, in broken English, said, ‘If it weren’t for America, I wouldn’t be here. If America had not come to Kosovo, I would probably be dead.’ He said, ‘I have an American Flag hanging in my house.’" 
        One of the fishermen who had lost his family told Caldwell’s group that foreigners, not their own people from the Muslim community, have been the ones to show concern. "A lot of Muslim clerics have said that this (the tsunami) is punishment, because Aceh was not faithful enough (to Allah). These people are hurting, and this is kind of waking them up a bit, to know that they have a cruel religion, with the clerics saying that it’s their fault. 
        "We called ourselves a sect of the Nazarenes. We didn’t call ourselves Christians, because they have a terrified fear that you would somehow convert them just by being in their presence.
        "They would ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ I would say, ‘I came from America because I love you. I’m volunteering and spent my own money and gave up my vacation time to be here.’ And they would just be floored. Hopefully, the door will be open to keeping Christ there. We’re building bridges, and we’re letting them know that we’re going to be there." 

          
            Standing among the ruins of what were homes in Banda Aceh.
            The tsunami's devastation was far reaching.

           
            A 6' tall doctor from a Kansas City medical team is dwarfed by 
            the height of this tree along the coast. The tree's limbs up to 
            40 feet were broken by the tsunami.


        At one refugee camp, the medical team encountered a group of college students from Indonesia who had come into the village, ‘to protect Islam.’ Caldwell and his group had asked the patients at the camp if they could pray with them, in the name of Isa al Masi (Jesus the Messiah), and most of them would say yes. "Intercessory prayer is a foreign concept for them," he said. The college students, however, would tell the people not to pray. "The students told us, ‘We appreciate what you are doing. Just don’t pray.’ One of the students wanted to go to medical school, and I disarmed him by asking, ‘Do you want to take blood pressure and look in ears?’ He was dying to, but he was trying to be tough, ‘to protect Islam.’ 
        "Most of the people are Muslim by peer pressure, so it’s not that important to them who is providing medical care and helping them. They just know that somebody cares." 
        At a large refugee camp of about 1,000 people, Caldwell and the group were told by a male nurse not to pray with the patients. "We were always very respectful of them," said Caldwell, "even to the point that the women with us wore head coverings, which they appreciated. When we asked if they would mind if we prayed with the patients, and the nurse said, ‘No, I don’t want you to do that,’ we said all right. But, at the end of the day, he said, ‘I don’t have a blood pressure cuff or a stethoscope,’ and he was the nurse for this 1,000-person camp. I said, ‘I’ll take care of that for you.’ I got one of our blood pressure cuffs and one of our stethoscopes, and, as I was handing them to him, I said, ‘But next time we come, we’re going to pray.’ And he said, ‘Absolutely.’" 
        The medical team had their own worship service at their rented house on Sundays. "We were singing, at the top of our lungs, Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art," Caldwell said. 
        He told how the wife of one of the community leaders, who is over a mosque, is a closet Christian. The day the tsunami hit, said Caldwell, people ran to the mosque for escape. "This closet Christian prayed openly in Jesus Christ’s name, and the water literally stopped three feet from the door of the mosque," he said. "She has had an opportunity since then to verbalize her faith a bit." 
        Caldwell recalled the beauty of Banda Aceh, part of which had been a tropical resort area. 
        The greater beauty, however, can be found in the eyes and hearts of the people, especially the children, who can still find a way to smile, even in the midst of their tragic circumstances. 
        "Everybody has lost a lot," said Caldwell. "Many people are missing, and I saw a lot of thrown-together families, where a distant uncle was taking care of a distant niece, because the two of them are all that’s left, and that’s their family. 
        "I brought back a child’s shoe to remind me how small we are. 
        "I think that, as Christians, we ought to be praying that God’s love and mercy will be shown there while all of these people are hurting, and praying that we can keep that door open. 
        "It ought to embolden us to tell people about Jesus here. If we can go to the doorstep of Mecca and have an opportunity to witness, and we don’t do it around here, it’s kind of sad."